Top Gun Vs. Total Recall

By FRANK RICH

Published: September 14, 2003

ONLY in America could a guy who struts in an action-hero's Hollywood costume and barks macho lines from a script pass for a plausible political leader. But if George W. Bush can get away with it, why should Arnold Schwarzenegger be pilloried for the same antics?

At least Mr. Schwarzenegger is a show-biz pro. He never would have signed on for a remake of ''Top Gun'' without first ensuring that it would have the same happy ending as the original. He never would have allowed himself to look as scared as the abandoned kid in ''Home Alone'' while begging the nation for cash and patience last Sunday night. He would have dismissed B-movie dialogue like ''dead or alive'' and ''bring 'em on'' with a curt ''hasta la vista, baby!''

And while both men have signed on to the same Hollywood fantasy for fixing an economy spiraling into billions of dollars of debt -- cut taxes, spend more -- the foreign-born Mr. Schwarzenegger comes by his fiscal pipe dreams the old-fashioned American way. He earned his multi-millions himself rather than through sweetheart deals available exclusively to the well-pedigreed.

This is why the hypocrisy attending the Arnold phenomenon from all sides -- Republicans, Democrats, the media -- is an entertainment in itself. Decades after John Kennedy embraced the Rat Pack and Ronald Reagan conflated the heroism of World War II movies with his actual (noncombat, stateside) war experience, voters are inured to the reality that show-business tricks are in the arsenal of every would-be national politician. Only Washington remains shocked, shocked that there could be a ''circus'' in which our political culture becomes indistinguishable from ''Extra'' (on which Rob Lowe came out for Arnold).

The fun in watching Mr. Schwarzenegger is that, unlike Mr. Bush and most of his other political peers, he doesn't pretend to be above Hollywood stunts; he flaunts his showmanship and policy ignorance as flagrantly as those gaudy rings he wears. Rather than wait a few weeks to trade quips with a late-night TV comic, as Mr. Bush and Al Gore did in the 2000 campaign, he just cut to the chase and announced his candidacy to Jay Leno. The political press then pooh-poohed his decision to give his first interview to Pat O'Brien of ''Access Hollywood'' instead of, say, Tim Russert. But Mr. O'Brien, who began his career working for David Brinkley at NBC News in Washington, points out that most of his supposedly more serious colleagues were condescending to Mr. Schwarzenegger as a show-biz joke anyway, with their dim wordplays on the titles of his movies. ''Everybody ought to take a deep breath and realize the guy is a candidate now, not the Terminator,'' Mr. O'Brien says. ''There aren't enough of those metaphors to last until the election.''

When Ronald Reagan was asked to predict what kind of governor of California he'd make, he famously answered: ''I don't know. I've never played a governor.'' As his biographer, Lou Cannon, has written, Reagan ran for that office not knowing how bills were passed or budgets were prepared. In this sense, Mr. Schwarzenegger has admitted to being somewhat Reaganesque. His ideology, though, is way to the left of his party, despite all the lip service he pays to being a fiscal conservative. (Howard Dean is a fiscal conservative, too.) Mr. Schwarzenegger is pro-choice, pro-gay rights, pro-gun control, pro-green. He has said that the Clinton impeachment made him ''ashamed'' to call himself a Republican.

It is hilarious to watch conservatives -- the same conservatives who often decry phony Hollywood liberals and their followers -- betray their own inviolate principles to bask in Arnold's hulking movie-star aura so that they might possibly gain a nominal Republican victory in the bargain. Even the 1977 Oui magazine interview in which Mr. Schwarzenegger bragged about participating in orgies -- not to mention his repeated admissions of drug use -- can't frighten them away.

Arnold may have ducked questions about affirmative action, but that hasn't stopped Fox's star-struck Sean Hannity from gushing that he's ''as forthright as any politician I've ever interviewed in my life.'' As for the Oui confessional, Bill O'Reilly said: ''So what? He's a new guy.'' Rush Limbaugh at first questioned Mr. Schwarzenegger's conservative bona fides, but of late has been hedging, praising Arnold for ''the charisma, the star power, the stage presence . . . the likability, the personality'' and saying that he never meant to imply that he ''is not worthy.'' No less a religious conservative than Pat Robertson came out for La-La-Land's pro-gay, pro-choice Republican as well: ''I'm a body-builder. . . . So I think the weight lifters of the world need to unite.''

Ann Coulter has a term for conservatives who wimp out like this -- ''girly boys.'' But she's gone all girly herself over Arnold, telling Larry King that ''I'm impressed enough that he's in Hollywood, he's married to a Kennedy and he still calls himself a Republican -- that's good enough for me.'' Perhaps. Her friend, Bill Maher, has taken a somewhat darker view of these unlikely political conversions. ''If his father wasn't a Nazi,'' he has said of Arnold, ''he wouldn't have any credibility with conservatives at all.''